Journalist missing in western Mexico

New York, April 9, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists voiced concern today about the fate of Mexican journalist Ramón Ángeles Zalpa, left, who has been missing since Tuesday, according to his family and reports in the local press.

Ángeles, a part-time correspondent for the newspaper Cambio
de Michoacán in the municipality
of Paracho, in western
Michoacán, left home in his car around 1 p.m. on Tuesday, his son Romel Ángeles
told CPJ. The journalist was on his way the National University of Pedagogy,
but never reached the school’s facilities, his son said. No one has heard from
Ángeles since.

According to Juan Ignacio Salazar, a senior editor for the
Morelia-based Cambio de Michoacán, the journalist has covered a variety of
local beats, including organized crime. The editor also said that in late
March, Ángeles covered an armed attack on a local indigenous family. According
to local journalists, the alleged assailants belong to a local criminal gang.

“We are concerned about the fate of Ramón Ángeles Zalpa,”
said CPJ’s deputy director Robert Mahoney. “He is the second journalist from
this paper to go missing in less than six months. The authorities must act
promptly to find him.”

The journalist’s family reported him missing to the
Michoacán state prosecutor’s office, Cambio de
Michoacán reported Wednesday. CPJ is investigating whether his
disappearance is related to his journalistic work.

MichoacánState has come under
siege by two drug cartels, which for more than a year have been fighting a
bloody war to control the area and have threatened local journalists to tailor
their reporting to favor one or the other group, CPJ’s research
shows. Journalist María
Esther Aguilar Cansimbe, also a correspondent for Cambio de Michoacán, went
missing in Michoacán in November 2009. Nobody has heard from her since.

CPJ research
indicates that eight journalists, not including Ángeles, have gone missing
since 2005 in Mexico
while doing their work.